


In the Stillness of Remembering

by i_am_girlfriday



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Honeymoon, Memories, Pillow Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13071762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_girlfriday/pseuds/i_am_girlfriday
Summary: Philip and Elizabeth talk about taking a honeymoon.





	In the Stillness of Remembering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peritoneal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peritoneal/gifts).



> Title is from [Dreams by Fleetwood Mac](https://youtu.be/mrZRURcb1cM).

Phillip wants to ask Elizabeth to go away with him after they get married officially. Not defect, he’s not going to have that conversation again. He just wants to go away like married couples do. They go away all the time, but he doesn’t want to go away on a mission. He just wants a getaway. They’re travel agents, they should be able to travel for _fun_. But Phillip can’t really remember the last time he had fun, he’s not even sure he’s ever experienced _fun_ with Elizabeth.

He waits until they have a free hour together in bed. It’s almost four in the morning when they get in, and they’re both to keyed up to actually sleep. They forgo sex due to sheer exhaustion, but Elizabeth turns toward him and cuddles. She’s tactile with him now, and he treasures it because it was hard won. She cards his hair with her blunt fingertips. He kisses her nose. She looks open, as open as she can manage. He tries to mirror her expression by relaxing his facial muscles, but like everything else in his body, they’re tightly coiled.

“I wish we could get away,” he says it quietly, like he doesn’t want the world to hear, just Elizabeth. “A honeymoon.”

She doesn’t reply right away, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips. “Where would we go?” she matches his volume. She’s just audible to him now that they are a breath’s distance apart.

Phillip thinks about the shiny pamphlets they have at the office--Cape Cod, Key West, the Smoky Mountains, New Orleans, the Grand Canyon, Santa Barbara. He’s sold countless vacations to families and couples young and old, but he’s seen so little of the country he’s lived in for the last twenty-plus years. He knows the DC metro area forward, backward, and blindfolded, it’s just the rest of the country that’s a mystery. He’s perfected nodding and smiling and repeating details from the brochures. _Don’t forget to try a lobster roll. Margaritaville. The leaves are beautiful in the fall. Jazz and beignets. Red dirt stains the rental car floor mats. The American Riviera._

“Someplace warm,” is all he can come up with on the spot.

Elizabeth’s hand travels down his neck and rests on his chest. “On the water. A resort.”

He knows just the place. “Puerto Vallarta.”

“Puerto Vallarta,” Elizabeth says but it comes out more of a pur. 

He can tell it thrills her. “Cabanas at the beach.” Phillip hitches her leg up over his hip.

She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t retract her leg. “A swim-up bar at the pool.” 

“We could walk along the _malecon_.” Phillip likes the way Spanish sounds, the utter foreignness of it. He used to feel that way about English, but now he even dreams in English. 

Elizabeth’s lips twitch. “Just two spies on the boardwalk.” 

“We wouldn’t be the first.” He wonders if she remembers.

“ _Le Magnifique_.” 

She does remember. 

“It’s been ages since I’ve thought about that trip.” Elizabeth smiles.

They had been on a mission in New York, their cover was a travel agents’ convention, and they were to pick up a dead drop package at the Paris Theater. Philip and Elizabeth had to endure ninety minutes of a French slapstick spoof about _superspy Bob Sinclair_ before they could retrieve the thin envelope from the third row. The movie had been lousy but the scenery was gorgeous. The movie was set in Acapulco, but was filmed in Puerto Vallarta, which didn’t matter to most people except the tourism bureau and travel agents.

Gabriel’s asset proved he had a sense of humor by choosing that film as the dead drop location. Otherwise, the mission had been quick, and not all that interesting. They weren’t in any hurry to get back to DC, so they stayed the whole weekend. It was probably the closest thing they’d ever had to a real couple’s getaway.

“What was that, 1974?” Philip tries to figure out the year by remembering how old the kids were.

“Summer of ‘76,” Elizabeth says. “Henry was about five and a half.”

“Paige was nine?”

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “Eight and a half.”

Philip grins.

“I wish…” Elizabeth trails off and then starts again, “Back then, we were so young.”

It’s an obvious statement, but Philip knows his wife, he knows what she means. _Young and foolish_. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know.” Philip rubs Elizabeth’s hipbone with his thumb.

She closes her eyes. “Had I warmed up to you at all by 1976?”

Philip has a distinct memory of their hotel room, it was on the forty-eighth floor of the Sheraton in Times Square, the Italian restaurant they ate at on Mulberry Street, and the nightgown Elizabeth had worn. He can’t believe how clear it is in his head after all this time. “You were thawing out.” He slips his fingers under the waistband of her underwear and elicits a small sigh from her. 

“I remember Gabriel telling me to let my hair down after the mission was over.” She rolls her eyes and runs her fingers through her long hair. “I bought this ridiculous nightgown.”

Philip feels a pinch in the general vicinity of his heart. There was an ebb and a flow to the frustration they had with each other back then, and he remembers they were almost happy then, or at least in sync with each other. They were two spies immersed in their elaborate make believe. It’s one of his fondest memories of their marriage from _before_ , before they made it real.

“I wanted you to think I was pretty,” she admits. She knows she’s drop dead gorgeous, but she’s not fishing for compliments. She’s telling him something important, something he missed all those years ago. 

“You were pretty to me then,” he says carefully. 

“Pretty in pink.” Elizabeth challenges him with her eyes.

Philip is confident in his memory. “Peach. It was peach lace.”

Elizabeth lets out the smallest giggle. “It was peach, wasn’t it?” She presses her nose to the hollow of his neck and whispers, “I wanted something soft.” She kisses his throat. “Romantic.”

“It was.” Philip remembers they had sex. And he’d liked it. He was present, connected, not somewhere deep inside his head. He couldn’t read Elizabeth then the way he can now. He had no clue if she’d enjoyed herself at all.

“I was trying,” she admits. “To connect.”

He nods his head and pulls her closer. Philip remembers the early years--the work was difficult, it always was, but it wasn’t physically grueling yet--they had time to build a family together. Philip feels like they squandered those years and the regret is palpable when he spends time with his kids. He wonders if Elizabeth ever feels like him, like they shortchanged Paige and Henry, like they shortchanged themselves. They wasted so much time treating each other like business partners and not fully loving each other. “We pretended until it became real.”

“It’s real now.” Elizabeth sighs softly against his skin.

He remembers their vows. They wore crowns in the dead of night and pledged themselves to each other in their mother tongue. “Now and forever.” 

“Do you want to go, then?” Elizabeth asks. “To Puerto Vallarta.”

Philip hums. He knows Elizabeth isn’t serious, the Center would never approve. But she’s trying, and it touches him. “How about something closer. New York?” He’s mentally booking their flights and hotel, and wonders if that little Italian place is still open.

“No swim-up bar.” Elizabeth tsks Philip. “No cabanas on the beach.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.” He hints at something and wonders if she can hear it in his tone.

Elizabeth grinds gently against Philip’s thigh. She does hear it. 

“I’ll see if I can find that peach nightie,” she teases.

Philip laughs and it dawns on him that he’s having fun. He’s happy and in love with his wife; they’re having fun together. Everything is right in that moment. So he holds on tight.

**Author's Note:**

> I fell down a research rabbit hole and went with it.  
>  _Le Magnifique_ is one of [many movies filmed in Puerto Vallarta](https://www.puertovallarta.net/fast_facts/movies-shot-in-puerto-vallarta). According to the [New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A03E5D6173EE334BC4053DFB166838D669EDE), the film showed in July 1976 at the then named Fine Arts Theater, which is a historical single screen cinema known as the [Paris Theater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paris_Theater_\(Manhattan\)).


End file.
